Here’s a tasty pumpkin beer I got from our own Chuck Triplett, folks: Pumpkin Hunter Ale Brewed with Pumpkin & Spices from the Devil’s Backbone Brewery of Roseland and Lexington, Virginia. This is really the first beer I’ve had from this brewery, although I have had the Clipper City Heavy Seas Land Ho Black Pilsner which was a collaboration beer between Heavy Seas and Devil’s Backbone.

Be that as it may, I have a Devil’s Backbone logo beer glass. How did that happen? Devil’s Backbone beers are not sold here in Georgia, but I saw the really neat glass on Ebay one day and, reasoning that I might someday come across a DB beer, I bought it. The price was right and the shipping was free after all.

The glass itself holds a half liter and is in style a German Willibekker. There are, however, lots of different styles for beer glasses, including shaker pint glasses, stemmed tulip shaped pilsner glasses, fluted glasses, tapered hefeweizen glasses, wide mouthed goblets, nonic imperial pints, Scotch ale glasses, and countless more.

The debate amongst beer geeks these days seems to be over the shaker more than any other, and some beer geeks seem to eschew it. I don’t know why. Wide mouthed glasses may allow you to better appreciate the aroma of a beer, but other than that, there is really no benefit I have ever noticed from one glass to another.

So what’s the best beer glass to use then? A logo glass from the brewery that made the beer, of course.

My bottle of Pumpkin Hunter has a brewed on date of what looks like 9/04/14. The beer has an alcohol content of 5.1% by volume, and that’s about all I know about it. Other than it tastes really good.

Devil’s Backbone Pumpkin Hunter Ale Brewed with Pumpkin & Spices pours to a bright orange amber color with a very light head formation and a subtle nose of butter and spice. Taking a sip, the beer is a little thinner in body than I would like but there is a fair amount of malt followed by a hint of pumpkin and a healthy amount of cinnamon and nutmeg. The cinnamon really comes out for me, and the finish is very dry from all the spice.

All in all, this is a tasty addition to the pumpkin beer pantheon, and certainly a beer I would buy if it were sold here in Georgia.

And remember, try a new beer today, and drink outside the box.

*Pricing data accurate at time of review or latest update. For reference only, based on actual price paid by reviewer.

(B)=Bottled

(D)=Draft